Article: Island of Secrets - Michael Carroll, author of the best-selling book, 'Lab 257: The Disturbing Store of the Government's Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory,' was back on the East Coast, vacationing with his family, and amazed over recent developments concerning Plum Island. The local congressman is trying to keep it in operation -- 'utter foolishness' considering the threat the island represents, says Carroll.

The Baltic states, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, took early and more painful steps than the rest of Europe after the euro crisis began and as a result, are in better shape than many European economies.

Scientific debates aside, the GMO frames the American way of eating in alarming terms: We are mechanized eaters (85 percent of our processed foods contain GMOs) dependant on mechanized farmers -- of our population -- to feed us. Do we wish this on the rest of the world?

Marshaling the research, educational and political power of five colleges and dozens of faculty, UC Berkeley has launched the Berkeley Food Institute, whose aim is nothing less than the transformation of the world's food system into one that is diverse, just, resilient and healthy.

In recent decades, the watershed of the Nandamojo River, on Costa Rica’s northern Pacific coast, has undergone radical environmental change. Seasonal flooding has intensified, and riverbeds that used to flow year-round are now dry for several months each year.

Cover crops catching on with Midwest growers, says Commodity Classic team John Walter Agriculture.com Executive Editor Annual ryegrass and other cover crops are gaining popularity with Midwest crop producers, say seed growers. At the Commodity Classic trade show in Anaheim this week, farmers spent time talking with several representatives of the Oregon Ryegrass industry. "We…

Over the last century nighttime minimum temperatures have been increasing at a faster rate than daily maximum temperatures. This warming trend has caught the attention of climatologists and agricultural scientists as they attempt to address the potential effects of elevated nighttime minimum temperatures on the health of these crops, which are so important to the U.S. economy. In this study, ten sites represent the Corn Belt of the United States. Those sites are spread across an area in which the average minimum nighttime temperatures for each of the three primary growing months of the year (June, July, August) increased from 1950-2011. Since this is a relatively new phenomenon, the effects of increased nighttime temperatures are not well understood. The main variables that can affect the growth of crops under elevated nighttime temperatures are: a shift in agro climatic zones resulting in an introduction of new pests formerly foreign to the crops, deviation from prime respiration temperatures and lastly the subsequent change in the properties of air associated with warmer air that would likely exist in a changing climate. Warmer nighttime temperatures raise the respiration rate of corn plants to levels above the optimum rate. This leads to “wasteful respiration,”which often compromises the plant structure (leading to “stalk cannibalization”), negatively affects the overall health of the plant, and jeopardizes maximum production. Most crop simulation models and experimental results used in climate and agriculture studies were not designed well enough to quantify multiple stress effects associated with this research. The complexity and input requirements of a reliable agro ecosystem model are such that the predictive capacity of the simulation models represents a much smaller area than desired, decreasing the validity of a large-scale application. More research needs to be conducted comparing differing agro environments (since each environment contains a different set of target variables like soil type, rainfall, plant species, and climate events). Such research is necessary to help untangle climate effects from other factors affecting maximum crop yield.